---

Company Law Reform Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend, who has considerable professional experience of these matters, is right. I hope he will go further and join me in saying that if the best businesses are doing that, it behoves the Government to ensure that those that are less good do so too. Why should our good companies, which conduct a review because it is good for them, find themselves at a disadvantage because their competitors are unwilling to do so, which may give them a short-term advantage? Why are the Government so afraid? What is the deal that has been done in the Digbyisation of the Government? There is a closeness—a kind of relationship—with a particular bit of the CBI that I find difficult to understand. While Ministers are defending their indefensible position in the House, the leaders of British industry are in No. 10 discussing with the Prime Minister exactly the kind of attitudes that we are asking for in the Bill. All the people who really care about climate change are there, explaining to the Prime Minister why the Government must do more in that regard. All the people whom we rely upon to set the standards in British industry are there saying the opposite to what the Government are saying in the Bill. There are, sadly, at least two Governments in the House: the Government of the public face and the Government of the Bill—a Bill that does not do what it should. It does not do what it was intended to do, and what it could do by setting a standard and giving the Government a leadership role.